Ace309

I say he's dumb for just signing it. He should have had a lwayer look at it first instead of agreeing to it and then saying that it's unfair now. You're ignoring the possibility that he signed it knowing that it seemed overly restrictive and banking on being able to blue-pencil his way out of it. Not the smartest move by any stretch of the imagination, but when you're faced with wanting out of a contract and having little to no bargaining power, as he was, you tend to take your chances. This isn't meant to portray Lesnar as being a poor guy taken advantage of, just to say that he was really at McMahon's whim when getting out of the contract. It happens all the time.

My understanding, which I unfortunately can't find a cite to back up at the moment, is that a noncompetition clause is valid unless the court it's being tried in finds it unconscionable (law talk for "oogy"). In Raimonde v. Van Vlerah (1975), 42 Ohio St.2d 21, 71 O.O.2d 12, 325 N.E.2d 544, an Ohio court says that "A noncompetition clause is reasonable if the restraint is no greater than necessary for the protection of the employer, does not place undue hardship on the employee, and is not injurious to the public." Assuming for the sake of argument that this is reasonably consistent with whatever jurisdiction's laws apply under Lesnar's contract with WWE (which I'm doing because I can't be arsed to do real research for this, although it's a complex and highly relevant issue), the 2010 date isn't necessarily greater than is necessary to protect WWE, and it's not injurious to the public, but it could be argued that a young'n like Lesnar would face undue hardship losing five prime years for his image. Of course, you'd also face the argument that a lot of wrestlers have made money after age 30, and I'd expect judges who aren't smarky about wrestling to be swayed by examples like Hogan and Flair still going hard well past the age Lesnar will be in 2010. The article linked below indicates one to two years as points where the clauses start to be looked at seriously as unenforceable. This article on non-compete clauses in Georgia raises a few issues. (Again with the no-real-research caveat.) Consideration isn't a problem, since releasing Lesnar from his obligations would reasonably be called the quid for the noncompete clause's quo. The scope issue is generally inoffensive when it comes to other worked promotions, since McMahon is limiting Lesnar from his exact duties in WWE. When it comes to MMA promotions, it might raise some eyebrows as overly broad because actual fighting wasn't part of his job in WWE and it might be considered an unreasonable limitation, but again, Vince has a business interest in protecting himself. The territorial restriction might bite Vince in the ass as unreasonable or overly broad, considering that Japan isn't really a bona fide competitor to WWE in the United States. A couple more articles here. Working only with this vague sense - I'm not a lawyer, after all - I'd say that this will probably get blue-pencilled down to two or three years from the date of his release, possibly with MMA and/or promotions that market primarily to Japan taken out of the picture entirely. If the restrictions stay in effect and only the time gets shaved, Vince will still achieve his objective of keeping Lesnar as his exclusive property until he more or less disappears from the casual fans' consciousness. Alternatively, they might look at other clauses - someone mentioned the 90-day standard clause - and impose that instead under good-for-the-goose reasoning. Only ones that are unreasonable according to the court's findings. Vince's team would likely draft a new standard clause to conform to the outer boundaries of the decision. Different situation. Lesnar's not still being paid, to my knowledge. If WWE's still paying him his downside, then the court's most likely going to reason that he's being paid for doing nothing and give the case the old heave-ho on the thinking that he's making the money he'd make somewhere else just for hanging out.

No, jack, they don't, unless you mean the $2 and change an hour that tipped workers are given for minimum wage. Tips are supposed to make up for the rest of it. "It's not the tipping I believe in, it's the overtipping." Vincent Antonelli, "My Blue Heaven."

Dude, I should start rewriting finishes just to augment my minimal power.

Can't you READ?! ::points to sign: DO NOT FEED THE GINGER::

And throw an orange julius on someone. It's not important what it is, just have them sell it like a demon being splashed with holy water.

Last night, apropos of nothing, I was treated to a discussion of dildos by two drunken Jewish girls who had not ten minutes before been arguing about Israel and whether Arabs are irreconcilably evil, or just evil by default. It sure improved my mood.

Sell the balls, too. ::boot::

Don't you think the pissing and moaning about "exploiting his name" would be about the same as the pissing and moaning about not inducting him? I mean, they're damned if they do and they're damned if they don't.

Remember, gentlemen. It's almost Kingmas.

Yeah. And it'd be fabulous if you'd post a little tutorial on How To Write Pete, since the only thing most of them know is to write "bid'ness."

Mike got matches from me, Dace and TNT. Judge got no matches, presumably, since he forwarded nothing along, and Dace's match was Davis's. Mine was Johnny's and TNT's was, obviously, Landon's. I received only Johnny's match. Dace received only Davis's, obviously. I can't speak for the poor saps who drew Landon in their pool.

You understand, I hope, that complaints about wanting extra words aren't persuasive when you were able to cut 200+ words off under the limit regardless. If the extra words were absolutely crucial, and if you were convinced that the word limit was absolutely set in stone, that leads to a final figure of 14,950 or so, and not to 14.8k. Not that any of this is directly relevant; I'm just explaining why I find you of all people to be the odd one to make this complaint.

We have a word limit that lends itself to exceptions in certain special cases. The cases in which I, personally, make exceptions are outlined above. This special-case exception does not, as I see the wheels in your mind turning, apply to most matches (EDIT for clarification - this means that in practice, the situation doesn't come up in most matches, becausemost writers don't try to screw around and hit the absolute boundary of the rules, not that "the exception is only 'allowed' in certain matches"). There's a great degree of encouragement to write to the word limit because with the level of talent we have, there's a very good chance that a given writer who goes over the limit will be outwritten by a given opponent who writes under or to the limit. The exception is just that. An exception. It's also important to highlight, yet again, that the Clusterfuck was a special case and that was made clear in the discussion of the word limit, which specifically provided latitude for overruns. In any case, you didn't hit 15,000, so why start complaining about wanting extra words?

Because I don't think there's anything wrong with the system as it stands. To codify yet another mechanical rule into the decision ties the marker's hands to another degree, and putting both pissing and moaning aside, overruns aren't a rampant problem in the fed. Besides, if fed experience is any guide, adding the overrun limit will ensure that practically everyone who writes to the limit writes to the overrun limit, and then we're back in the same situation. I'm in the business of giving the win to the better match. The system is self-regulating already - why bother adding another piece of paperwork that will add to more bitching?

Is the discussion above unclear?

By 'save' your match, I meant 'bring it up to the quality of Landon's,' which should have been obvious in context. Keeping in mind as well that, as I noted, your general complaint on the word limit isn't entirely relevant because of the safety valve for exceptional matches in the Clusterfuck post itself, I agree with you that under certain circumstances a word limit being an absolute bar is a good thing. Those circumstances would include many things - professional contexts like magazines jump out at me immediately, as space is at a premium - but this isn't one of them for several reasons, not the least of which is that no one's going to live or die, make or lose money or suffer any real consequences as a result of anything that happens in the fed. The purpose of the fed is to have fun, something I think a lot of people are ignoring at this point, through a process of friendly competition or cooperation (as in angles) conducted by writing competitive or joint matches. That said, do you have a specific problem with the sliding-scale approach I described, which I use because it rewards an overrunner only if his opponent's match was clearly not the better match and could not have been even with the same overrun, or is it just a matter of "a limit is a limit" dogma?

We're reluctant, of course, to say that "exactly this many words over the limit is the autojob limit" because that doesn't accomplish anything - it just creates a different word limit. I can't speak for Mike, but I for one (and I'm following precedent here - at least Zed is on record the same way) am reluctant to autojob someone. Let's take a look at Sacred vs. Landon for the belt as an example, since Landon seems to really hold a grudge about it. By my word count, which I did after Landon brought it to my attention, Sacred was +/- 150 words over, or 2.5% over the limit. Landon was 79 words over, if I recall correctly - he certainly was over the limit as well, even if it was only ~1.3% over as compared to Sacred's 2.5%. Neither word limit violation was egregious, especially in light of the other. Now, had Sacred written a 6150-word match against a Landon 6000-word match, and Sacred's match had been only slightly better, or the matches were equal, that would give cause to consider the word limit in the decision. (Of course, if Landon's match was the better match, then the word limit doesn't come into play at all in this situation.) However, as it stands, Sacred had written a clearly better match, and had Landon written the same match but shaved it down to 6000 without losing any content, I still would have been more comfortable giving it to Sacred. I didn't mark the Clusterfuck final, but I dare say - especially considering that the word limit paragraph included a certain amount of latitude for exceptionally good matches as a built-in pressure release valve for just this discussion - that Mike had more or less the same thought process going on. As to why I don't autojob people for writing 6001 words, well, if this were something other than an e-fed, I might. As it stands, though, I have the luxury of considering each match on a case-by-case basis, although I do my best to keep my standards consistent. In a case like Sacred-Landon, concerns like the ones spelled out above come into play. Even in easier cases - think of, say, a 3000-word match where one guy sent in a haiku or a 700-word match, and the other guy wrote 3500 words - you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, when it comes to the fed's reaction. I just do what I can to be transparent about my decisions so that everyone can understand what my standards are, and frankly, I'm inclined to give the duke to the guy who wrote the better match. That requires considering what sort of advantage came from the overrun, whether his opponent could have augmented his match to the same quality with the same overrun, and so forth. This discussion is immediately relevant to Clusterfuck comments. Further discussion on this topic will not be. To avoid hijacking this thread - which is something we all really need to work on - I'd appreciate it if anyone who wants to continue the discussion on word limits and autojobbing started a thread in the Community forum and continued it there, preferably with a copypaste of this post. Consider this fair warning that hijack posts of this or any other kind will be deleted from this thread or edited to highlight your love for the cock. I'm not trying to be a hardass here, but the Clusterfuck comments thread is for Clusterfuck comments.

Johnny? 700 words wouldn't have saved your match.

::tasers Landon::

That is correct. However, if we wait for the card to go up, that will interfere with the writers' ability to write. Therefore, Mike and I discussed this and chose two people who did not show in the Clusterfuck for the main event, and a rookie and someone who was inadvertantly left out of Clusterfuck because Mike is a tool for the undercard match. It is, as Munich might agree, a happy medium.

As always, Mike, good stuff.

Updated through Battleground.

Confessions of a Yakuza by Junichi Saga. A secondhand memoir of a gang boss, as recounted to his doctor during the last months of his ife. Sort of like Tuesdays With Morrie, only, y'know, interesting.

"WCW Special Forces."